Chess: How does Black win?

"I WILL play 40 good moves and if you do the same then it will be a draw" – former world champion Vassily Smyslov. But as we witnessed recently at the uninspiring candidates' matches in Kazan, today's top players aren't even waiting to anything like move 40 to draw.

Of the possible 30 classical games there was a 90 percent draw ratio in Kazan – but unlike Smyslov, it was a sad indictment for the game as players were agreeing short "grandmaster draws" in 12, 15 and 18 moves to deliberately decide the outcome of their matches in the tiebreak rapid and blitz games. This has led to an outcry over why Fide had no "Sofia rules" in force that would have prevented such a debacle in the first place.

There's no doubt that this oversight – which many predicted – led to a PR disaster for the game in what should have been a showcase world championship qualifier. And the person who championed the introduction of the anti-draw Sofia rules, Veselin Topalov's manager, Silvio Danailov, who is president of the European Chess Union, is demanding immediate reforms from Fide to prevent this happening again, and it is looking for the resignation en masse of the Fide committee responsible for organising world championship events. Boris Gelfand, who won the candidates final to go forward to play World champion Vishy Anand next year in a title match, at least was responsible for two of the three wins in the classical games.

S Mamedyarov - B Gelfand

Candidates Quarterfinals, (1.3)

Sicilian Najdorf

1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6 6 Bc4 e6 7 Bb3 b5 8 0–0 Be7 9 Qf3 Qc7 10 Qg3 0–0 11 Bh6 Ne8 12 Rad1 Bd7 13 f4 Nc6 14 f5 Nxd4 15 Rxd4 Kh8 16 Be3 Nf6 17 Qh3 d5 18 e5 Qxe5 19 Rh4 Rfc8 20 Kh1 Rxc3 21 bxc3 Qxc3 22 Rd4 a5 23 Rd3 Qc6 24 c3 a4 25 Bc2 e5 26 Bg5 b4 27 Qh4 bxc3 28 Rh3 Kg8 29 Re1 e4 30 g4 Kf8 31 Be3 Qc4 32 g5 Bxf5! 33 gxf6 Bxf6 34 Qh5 Bg6 35 Qg4 Qxa2 36 Bb1 Qc4 37 Qg2 a3 38 Ba2 Qc6 39 Rg3 Rb8 0–1